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NESTLE USA Creativity is not always the basis for planning the recovery of business operations in many companies. At Nestle it was the origin. Like many companies Nestle had to find alternatives for recovering their headquarters business operations. The traditional options were using one of the work area recovery vendors of which there were two at the time. Even with the seats available at the chosen provider, Nestle was faced with the problem that there were not enough seats to meet the needs of the minimal number of staff. A unique relationship Nestle had at the time was a hotel located near Palm Springs 134 miles from their Glendale headquarters. Discussions about using the hotel as a recovery location proved favorable, but the challenge of being able to quickly set up work areas for an additional 300 staff seemed somewhat overwhelming. The hotel agreed to the arrangement but required that none of the work area equipment be in place on a permanent basis. A later exception was the permanent installation of equipment in a small closet located in a meeting room. The technical, facility and business teams participating in the planning effort worked together to identify alternatives. Little did Nestle know that a "rain gutter" together with the quest for simplicity would provide a process that would serve as the foundation for their ability to set up 300 workstations within the required time frame. Nestle also wanted a system that would permit them to exercise at the hotel annually which meant the equipment had to be easily set up before the exercise and taken down immediately following the exercise. There were several major challenges that had to be overcome and there were no existing processes commercially available. The first challenge was how to set up temporary work areas, all requiring an extensive amount of cabling, and provide power, data, and voice and print sharing for each business user in a ball room. How to run the hundreds of feet of cabling without creating an obstacle or hazard to the users? Under floor deployment was not possible. The ballroom ceilings were high ceilings with no options for holding the cables without permanently marking the ceilings, something not favorably looked on by the hotel. Floor runs were considered but found not feasible because of the number of ramps required and the potential constraints for physically challenged employees. The final decision was to carry the cables on trelliswork above the floor. The trellises were the same used to carry cables in a majority of the telecommunication rooms throughout the world. Since both data, voice and power cables would be carried in common trays; the highest quality cabling was used to prevent emanation interference between power and data cables. The next challenge was to bring services to each user station without creating a tangle of cables that would prove difficult to install and troubleshoot. Additionally, one unbending design principle was that only simple labor could be used to do a majority of setup. Nestle rightly assumed that in a regional disaster such as an earthquake, both internal and external technical resources may be difficult to obtain. Since Nestle was using a hotel as a recovery center, they should consider using hotel setup staff to assemble the workstations and services. This mandated that termination of services at each workstation had to be simple and fool proof. This is where the "rain gutter" idea came into play. Why couldn’t we terminate the cables into a "long gutter or pod" that would provide connection at each workstation for each service. It was determined that the company Panduit manufactured an extruded plastic cable housing product typically used for permanent installations that would meet Nestles requirements. These pods were designed and constructed to provide all of the required services to each workstation. Nestle decided early in the design process that normal cubicles with built-in cabling would not work for a number of reasons. First the cubicles took too long to put together, approximately 45 minutes per workstation. They also required specialized knowledge and tools to assemble and align. Second the failure of built-in services would be difficult to troubleshoot and repair. Third most cubicles with integrated services are not designed to be assembled and disassemble annually and integrated wiring failure was probable. Therefore it was decided to carry all service outside of the workstations in the "pods". The assembly problem for the cubicles posed another challenge that Nestle solved by teaming up with their office furniture provider, explaining Nestle’s objectives and having the provider design a simple cubicle to meet their need. This cubicle was simple to assemble with common tools and required no specialized training. Instead of 45 minutes to assemble a single cubicle, the average time was reduced to 5 minutes or less. Again hotel staff could perform the work. Hundreds of hours of creative thinking, team work and design efforts paid off. The first exercise of the new recovery environment identified a few minor problems but worked with few failures and was proved to be functional by the business users. Additional changes have been made as the technology used by Nestle changes, but the basic concept once implemented has served Nestle for over 6 years. During this time Nestle has become more self-sufficient by adding external emergency power and expanded their workstation capacity by utilizing a new fabric pavilion recently constructed by the hotel. The bottom line of this article is that Nestle understood the need to remain at least partially self-reliant and responsible for the fate of their recovery should contracted services not be available in a regional disaster. Hundreds of Nestle staff, management, and technical staff and outside vendors have participated in these exercises and have contributed to making the recovery more efficient each time. The setup during the first exercise took over three days to accomplish. The last exercise required less than 10 hours real time to configure the same recovery environment. Nestle’s investment by designing and making this unique capability a part of their recovery program has been relatively small. In return, it provides Nestle employees, management and customers with proof that Nestle does indeed have a real and proved solution ensuring continuity of Nestle operations even under the most challenging circumstances. About the author: |